Two South Dakota-based grain companies announced Tuesday they want to merge.
North Central Farmers Elevator and Wheat Growers plan to unify into a new cooperative, subject to a vote of the full membership of both cooperatives. The boards of directors of both cooperatives already have unanimously approved a letter of intent to merge.

BROOKINGS, S.D. - SDSU Extension recently released web-based drainage calculators for tile drainage and subirrigation design.
The calculators were developed in cooperation with University of Minnesota Extension. To learn more and access the calculators, visit www.iGrowdrainage.org.

The most important U.S. agricultural delegation to visit Cuba in more than a decade began three days of meetings on Monday, hoping to find potential business partners and urge the U.S. Congress to lift the trade embargo against the Caribbean nation.

In an extraordinary display of unity, 392 farm, nutrition and conservation groups have written congressional budget letters urging no cuts in any programs within the jurisdiction of the Senate and House Agriculture Committees.

A recent report is advising Americans to eat less meat, for both nutritional and environmental reasons.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its 2015 Dietary Advisory Guidelines, a report released every five years and is generally used as an eating guide to promote healthy lifestyles. This year, however, the report is also encouraging plant-based diets, due to their lighter environmental impact.

A Grand Forks, N.D., soil health workshop sponsored by local, county, state and federal organizations, drew upwards of 200 agriculturalists, most from northeast North Dakota and northwest Minnesota. This year’s attendance was nearly double that of a year ago.

The American Pulse Association and U.S. Dry Pea and Lentil Council say proposed federal dietary guidelines don’t fully reflect the nutritional benefits of pulse crops and could prompt Americans to eat less of them.

GMOs — or genetically modified organisms — first hit U.S. grocery shelves in 1994. They have been hotly debated in the two decades since, being denounced as unstable, unhealthy "frankenfoods" by some while being touted as a solution to feeding a growing global population by others.
“Farmers are obviously not out to harm their buyers,” says Scott Sinner, who grows both GMO and non-GMO crops. “Why would they be? It doesn’t make any sense.”

With weather conditions still uncertain for the upcoming planting season, predictions remain stagnant for grain prices in 2015.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s long-term projection for acreage planted predicts a 2 million acre reduction nationwide in corn. Jack Davis, the crops business management field specialist at the South Dakota State University Extension Mitchell Regional Center, says acreage will be shuffled into soybeans, small grains and alfalfa forage seeding.